Hope your week's off to a good start, 'cause Chattanooga's got the hammer out and we're buildin' all kinds of things around here. Seems like everybody caught the same bug this week (and I ain’t talking about the bad one).

We've got $4 tacos linin' the streets for Chattanooga Taco Week, Spain hoistin' the World Cup trophy after trainin' right here at Baylor School, and a lil' porch news of our own we're mighty excited to share. Oh, and I finally got to sit down with a fantasy author who's been buildin' her own universe since she was eleven years old!

Without further ado, let’s get into it!

As always, we’ve added a fresh track to this week’s issue purely for vibes as you read. Click the link below before ya start reading if you wanna listen!

This week's Front Porch Partner is the Apps Built With AI Summit! Justin Burns is done payin' for software that only does 80% of the job — so this July 22-24, he's showin' ya how to build your own tools with AI, no code needed, free to join.

Every lil' click sends $1.87 jingle janglin' straight into the Chattynooga coin purse. Appreciate ya, neighbor!

Alright Justin, build us somethin' good!

Every tool you're paying for right now was built by someone who's never done your job. They guessed at what you needed, wrapped it in a subscription, and now you're locked in - paying monthly for software that's 80% of what you actually want.

That other 20%? It's costing you time, workarounds, and money every single week.

Justin Burns figured out how to close that gap. He builds the exact tool he needs using AI - no code, no developers, no waiting. And this July 22-24, he's showing you how to do the same thing, live, in three days.

The event is free. The app you walk away with is yours.

Grab your seat for the Apps Built With AI Summit and stop paying for software that almost works.

Register free here — replays available for all who sign up.

Register For Free Now!

Chattanooga Taco Week

July 20-26 @ Participating Locations

For one week only, every day is Taco Tuesday! Chattanooga Taco Week is back with $4 tacos and margarita specials at participating restaurants throughout the city. Make sure you check in on the NoogaNightlife app to check in when you visit to vote for your favorites!

🌮 Taco bout a great week

Drink and Discover: Beach Bash

Friday, July 24 @ Creative Discovery Museum | 7:00 - 10:00 PM

The Creative Discovery Museum is bringing the beach to Chattanooga this Friday night! Leave the kids at home for an adults-only evening where you can sip, play, and pretend you're somewhere with an ocean breeze. Dust off your favorite beachwear and enjoy a museum experience that's anything but ordinary!

🏖️ Shell yeah

Back-to-School Cookout

Saturday, July 25 @ Chester Frost Park, Shelter #4 | 3:00 - 7:00 PM

Neighbors helping neighbors is what this community gathering is all about. Grab a free meal, browse the free pantry and clothing items, enjoy face painting, bring a shirt to tie-dye, and enter for a chance to win a backpack full of school supplies. Huge shoutout to our pal Jess Meroney, who organizes this community effort herself. If you'd like to volunteer or make a donation, your support goes a long way!

✂️See a need, fill a need

Noogavision: Entering the Empathetic Universe

Thursday, July 23 @ Hunter Museum | 6:00 - 7:00 PM

No two performances are quite the same with Noogavision. Using theater, movement, and spoken word, this local performing arts group creates immersive productions that invite audiences to experience stories in unexpected ways. It’s not traditional theater, but it’s sure to be a night you won’t forget!

🎭 All the world’s a stage

Lookout Comedy Show: Get Out the Vote

Thursday, July 23 @ Downtown Public Library | 7:30 PM

Lookout Comedy is bringing a lineup of Chattanooga comedians to the Downtown Library for a free night of stand-up, featuring some of the funniest folks in Chattanooga. This night is more than just a comedy show; it’s a reminder to get out in the community and make your voice heard! Admission is free thanks to the generous support of ArtsBuild.

🗳️ This is your reminder to check your voter registration!! :)

Wellness Way
Saturday, July 26 @ Outdoor Chattanooga | 9:00 AM

Start your weekend off right with a morning of movement, music, and mindfulness. From yoga and guided meditation to the rhythm of a community drum circle, Wellness Way invites you to slow down and enjoy a few peaceful hours outdoors. Admission is free, but be sure to register ahead of time to secure your spot!
🌿 Unwind your mind

Summer Plant Stroll

Saturday, July 25 @ Reflection Riding | 8:00 – 10:00 AM

Wildflower season is the perfect time to visit Reflection Riding! Come along for a guided walk through colorful summer blooms while learning about native plants, pollinators, and the landscapes that make this corner of Tennessee so special. The walk wraps up with exclusive access to the Native Plant Nursery, where you can shop available plants, ask questions, and gather ideas for your own outdoor space. 

🌸 All about flower power

Autism Field Day

Saturday, July 25 @ Washington Hills Community Center | 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Everybody deserves a day to play! Autism Field Day is a free community celebration filled with games, water activities, music, and plenty of family-friendly fun. Come make new friends, connect with local organizations, and celebrate a day centered on inclusion, community, and making joyful memories together. 

🎉 Time to play

Got somethin’ cookin’ that the Scenic City oughta know about?

Tell us all about it with our new and improved events form, or just reply to this email with your event details and we’ll go from there!

This week is filled with building and growth in all sorts of ways, and we have some of our own news to share with folks: we’re creating a space for Porch Pals to connect with each other directly within the Chattyverse, and we’re puttin’ elbow grease into making it one that you’ll enjoy with extra goodies, fun events, and other ways to connect outside of our weekly newsletter catch-up.

Later today, we’ll be sending an invitation to our 100 most active neighbors first to help brainstorm and flesh our blueprint out before we let the whole neighborhood in. That said, if you want in early you can just reply to this email and let us know bud!

Until then, see ya next week for the big reveal!

I finally got to sit a spell with our long-time Porch Pal Jay Olsen-Thrift this week, and lemme tell y’all somethin': I ain’t never met a person who has built a whole entire world before. I’ve seen many a shoddy treehouse and strange science fair presentation (my own included), but a world filled with gods, and orcs born from the lake (we'll get to that, hold your horses).

Jay's the author behind The Chronicles of the Second Sun, a fantasy trilogy set in the world of Daaria: a place she's been buildin' brick by imaginary brick for over twenty years. And after yappin' with her, I'm convinced the whole thing started the way all the best things do: with a kid who couldn't stop makin' stuff up.

Jay can't even point to when she started tellin' stories, 'cause there ain't a "before." She was that kid out in the yard pickin' up sticks and disappearin' into another world entirely. It’s a skill that make-believers possess, some happen to pick it up earlier in life than others do.

That said, the moment it all got real was 2007, when her daddy got the family playin' Lord of the Rings Online. He led a Kinship — that's LOTRO-speak for a guild — called Honor's Blood, and when he noticed his eleven-year-old had a knack for spinnin' tales, he did somethin' every parent oughta write down: he built a dedicated section in the kin's forum, just for postin' her stories.

So there's little Jay, writin' adventures about her elf hunter Munne and all her kinmates, which even encouraged older veterans in the Kin to start writing stories of their own right alongside her, resulting in a collaborative tapestry of their adventures across Middle-earth that would make Tolkien proud.

Now here's where the story takes a turn. Come high school, folks started drifting off the game, and one day some rando snuck in, took over the Kin, cleaned out the kin house full of their supplies, and disbanded Honor's Blood altogether. Rude with a capital R, if ya ask me.

At that point, Jay’s vision for Munne became bigger than Middle-earth’s inhabitants. So she packed up her elf and every character she'd dreamt up and moved 'em someplace new: a world of her very own called Daaria.

I asked Jay how in the world (pun intended) ya go from one elf character to an entire universe, and turns out ya do it the same way ya plant a garden: one seed at a time.

Munne obviously needed a home, so Jay asked herself the simple questions first like:

Then she wrote the mythology of Munne's people — the elves and their gods, and their backstory of how they were even created — and that's what bloomed into everything else. The world of Daaria grew up around one pointy-eared girl, root to branch.

And she don't stop at the main story details, but paints context that might not feel important in the moment of reading, but plants seeds in the audience’s noggins as context for later. For example, way out on the eastern side of Daaria she talks about a place called the Black Lakes, home of the Barauder (Jay's version of orcs) except they're water orcs that hatch from the lakes.

Jay says if she's gonna take ya to another world that’s different from our own, her job is to make ya believe in the place. All them little details are what make it feel like somewhere ya could actually land. I've swum in a good number of bodies of water and I can promise ya I will now be divin for orc eggs every single time.

Now, if you're picturin' a fantasy author's day as all quills and candlelight, lemme burst that bubble real gentle-like. I asked Jay what her research actually looks like, and she didn't blink: "Googlin' what plants can be grown in Europe at different times of the year."

I'm serious, y’all! One scene called for a sweet pastry, which sent Jay down a full hour-long rabbit hole of real Eastern European fruit just to decide what one made-up dessert had inside it. One day you're writin' the birth of gods, the next you're fact-checkin' a fictional pie. Nobody warns ya about that part of the job I suppose.

Her editor's even instilled a rule that if she mentions food in a scene without appealing to the reader’s senses then she’s marching right back to fix it. If a reader ain’t hungry at the end of a menu description, then why should they care?

Now for the excitin' news, neighbors: Daaria's about to open its gates to you!

Jay's never wanted the deal to be "I write books, you read books, goodnight." She wants folks tellin' their own stories in her world, same as her kin did all them years ago.

By the end of August (fingers crossed and knocked on wood), she's publishin' a set of three one-shot tabletop adventures set durin' the events of the trilogy to show what else is happenin' in Daaria while Munne's off doin' her hero business.

She's already playtested them herself and gotten folks grinnin', so now it's just a matter of gettin' 'em book-shaped and easy for anyone to tell their own story within Daaria’s expansive universe.

I asked Jay what she'd tell somebody who wants to start buildin' their own world, and her answer was simple enough to fit in your back pocket: start payin' attention to the background of the stories you love most. Ask yourself why a place feels real to ya. It don't even have to be fantasy; any good story is grounded in a good, fleshed-out world, even when that world's our own.

The trilogy's wrapping up with the release of the third book soon, but Munne's journey is still the very same one Jay scribbled out on that forum as a kid. Same plot points and ending, but the world constantly grew as her storytelling toolkit did.

What I can't quit thinkin' about since our yap is that Daaria only exists 'cause a daddy looked at his kid's stories and said "here, you deserve a place to put these." Twenty years later, it blossomed into three books and a whole world other folks'll get to play in themselves with their own kin.

Subscribe to Jay's newsletter for updates as the final book makes its way into the world, plus first dibs on news about them tabletop adventures come August.

Well folks, it’s officially official: The 2026 World Cup is over and Spain came out on top!

This junior sports reporter is pretty darn happy about that! You might be wondering why I’m so excited about Spain’s win when the USA has been out for a while.

The thing is, Spain winning the World Cup is almost like if Chattanooga won the whole thing! I mean, they did spend plenty of time training here at Baylor School. If you ask me, the whole Spanish team are honorary Chattanoogans and with that in mind, I am PROUD to share this victory with them!

That's a wrap on a week full of buildin' new worlds and plans for the porch, and one very well-earned trophy for Spain with a lil' Chattanooga pride mixed in.

Whether you spend your week bringing someone else’s world to life, grabbin' $4 tacos, or just tryin' to keep your own plans from gettin' too ambitious, we're glad ya rocked on the porch with us awhile.

Keep an eye out for that porch expansion news — we mean it when we say we're only gettin' started.

We'll see ya next week, bud!

— Bubby & Clementine